If you value commercial real estate for a living, you know the strangest thing happening in land right now: dirt isn't priced by the acre anymore. In the data center world, it's priced by the megawatt.

Cushman & Wakefield put a number on it this month. In their 2026 Data Center Development Cost Guide, powered land in primary U.S. markets is averaging $584,000 per megawatt so far this year, 35% above its five-year average and 51% higher than last year. Read that again: the land, not the building, not the servers, the land, costs more than half a million dollars per megawatt of power it can deliver.

That's the number everyone in this business needs to understand, because it tells you what buyers are actually purchasing. They're not buying dirt. They're buying electrons.

What “powered land” actually means

Here's the explainer I wish someone had handed me two years ago. A parcel is “powered” when it comes with a real, deliverable path to serious electrical capacity: typically a nearby substation with available capacity, a completed or advancing interconnection study with the utility, and a position in the interconnection queue that doesn't stretch into the next decade.

“Near a substation” is not the same thing. A site can sit across the street from a substation that's fully subscribed, and it's worth a fraction of an identical site two miles away with 200 MW of confirmed deliverable capacity. When I look at these deals, the first question is never the acreage. It's: how many megawatts, confirmed by whom, and when?

That's why $/MW has become the unit of comparison. A $/acre number without the megawatt figure attached is noise. It tells you nothing about what the buyer actually bought.

The most expensive dirt in America

The national average is $584,000/MW, but the spread around it is enormous, and Northern Virginia shows you the top of the market. Loudoun County, about 250 data centers, the densest concentration on the planet, is where land pricing detached from anything resembling normal commercial real estate:

  • Fairfax County: the county agreed to sell ~41.7 acres of its police training campus to SCG Global Holdings for $166.8 million, $4 million per acre for future data center development. That's a county selling its own land, at a public hearing, for $4M an acre. (Fairfax County purchase documents, via public records)
  • Loudoun County: SDC Capital Partners paid $615 million for 97 acres in November 2025, roughly $6.3 million per acre. Land near Loudoun substations now trades at an average of about $3.76 million per acre.
  • Prince William County: Microsoft paid roughly $3.75 million per acre for 124 acres.
  • Ashburn: Merritt Properties sold for $375 million, and one developer is reportedly buying out an entire 150-home neighborhood, the Regency, for around $576 million, roughly $4.4 million per acre, because it was cheaper than finding 130 empty acres that don't exist anymore.

When developers start buying whole subdivisions to get land, the land market has officially run out of land. Loudoun property values are up 182% in a decade, and data center tax revenue exceeded the county's entire operational budget by $35 million last year. The neighbors hate it. The backlash there is real. But the math is the math.

Why the money is this aggressive

The demand numbers behind these prices are almost hard to believe, and they all come from the same place: power.

U.S. data centers consumed 176 terawatt-hours in 2023, 4.4% of all American electricity, up from 1.5% in 2006. The DOE's Berkeley lab projects 325 to 580 TWh by 2028, which would be up to 12% of U.S. electricity. Data centers now account for 55% of all U.S. electricity demand growth. More than half of the country's new power demand is data centers.

JLL expects nearly 100 GW of new data center capacity between 2026 and 2030, roughly doubling the planet's existing capacity, at a price tag of up to $3 trillion. The pipeline C&W is tracking represents about $2.3 trillion in investment capital, with $492 billion already under construction.

But here's the number that explains the land panic specifically: there are 60 GW of potential large-load power projects in the planning pipeline, and only 13 GW are in advanced stages. If everything planned actually gets built, one regional estimate sees a 6 GW generation shortfall. There is not enough power to go around. So the land that has power, confirmed, deliverable, soon, commands whatever the market will bear. Right now that's $584,000 per MW and climbing 51% a year.

All-in greenfield development costs now average $17.6 million per megawatt in the U.S. and Canada for modern facilities (excluding the chips), and power infrastructure alone is 21% of that. (C&W) The land is a rounding error next to the build, which is exactly why buyers will pay almost anything for the right site. The dirt is the cheapest part of a $17.6M/MW project, unless you can't find dirt with power, in which case it's the whole project.

The behind-the-meter twist

One more trend changing the land math: operators are increasingly bringing their own power. 25% of data center sites now run on-site generation, up from 19% a year ago. The examples are getting enormous: 4.5 GW of on-site gas turbines at Homer City, Pennsylvania; an 11 GW on-site nuclear plan in Carson County, Texas; 360 MW of new gas turbines for the Stargate/Crusoe campus in Abilene, Texas.

For land valuation, this cuts two ways. A site that can't get grid power for five years but can host on-site generation has a path forward. Its value doesn't go to zero. But on-site generation is its own nine-figure capital project with its own permitting, fuel supply, and emissions math. When you're comparing $/MW across sites, you have to know whether the megawatts come from the grid, from behind the meter, or from a press release. They are not the same thing.

The appraiser's cautions

A few things I'd flag before anyone runs these numbers into a report:

Compare $/MW, not $/acre. The Fairfax and Loudoun per-acre figures look insane until you divide by the megawatts. A $6.3M/acre site delivering 300 MW is cheaper per megawatt than a $1M/acre site delivering 20 MW. The acre is the wrong denominator.

Verify the power, not the brochure. “Shovel-ready” and “power-secured” are marketing terms. What exists: an interconnection agreement, a queue position, a utility letter with a date. Talk to the utility. In Texas especially, we're a nondisclosure state, so there are no verified public comps for most of these trades. If you want to know what a site really sold for, you call the broker. There is no shortcut.

Entitlement risk is real and growing. The Loudoun backlash isn't unique: local governments are writing ordinances aimed specifically at data centers, and moratoriums are spreading. A site that's perfect except the county just paused data center approvals carries a real discount. Check the planning staff's mood before you believe the site plan.

The market is local in a way the averages hide. C&W's $584,000/MW is a primary-market average. Texas markets rank among the lowest-cost development environments in the country: business-friendly regulation, cheaper construction labor, mature contractors. (C&W) A powered-land comp from Loudoun County is not a comp for a site outside Dallas. Adjust, or don't use it.

The bottom line

Data center land has become a power derivative with dirt attached. The $584,000/MW figure will probably look quaint in two years or absurd in two years, depending on whether the generation buildout catches up with the demand, and right now the pipeline says it won't.

If someone brings you a data center land assignment, start with the same three questions I start every one with: how many megawatts, confirmed by whom, and when? Everything else, the acres, the $/acre comps, the broker's “shovel-ready,” is commentary.

Sources: Cushman & Wakefield 2026 Data Center Development Cost Guide (via Business Wire, Sep 3, 2026); Fairfax County purchase and sale documents for 3721 Stonecroft Boulevard; CRE Daily; Data Center Dynamics; The Verge.